ABSTRACT
Labour and class theory has largely ignored the state sector. Although there is no absence of political and sociological considerations of the state, there is scant consideration of the relationship between characterizations of the state and the class location of state employees (Holloway & Picciotto 1977, Jessop 1982, Clarke 1991a). Where labour and class theory has been addressed, it reflects the bias of studies towards manual worker occupations, incorporating paradigms of class appropriated from the study of the private sector (coal mining – Krieger 1983, Waddington et al. 1991, steel – Beynon et al. 1992, 1994). Nonetheless, with the massive restructuring and privatization of the public sector, this relative absence of studies is beginning to change (Taylor-Gooby & Lawson 1993, Farnham & Horton 1993). However, this new-found interest in the state sector has failed to give sufficient weight to the specificity of the labour process in the state sector or develop sufficiently a framework for the understanding of changing class relations within it.
